


Banished

by Thoughtstream



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Banishment, Body Horror, Falling from Heaven, Heaven & Hell, Lucifer Feels, Metatron has a sweet library, Michael tries hard but it's too little too late, Mild Gore, Pain, Scars, The taste of tears, Young Lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 17:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10645098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thoughtstream/pseuds/Thoughtstream
Summary: This is Lucifer's banishment from heaven in my own sort of AU drawing on Supernatural's characters and mentions of his fall but with my own twists. In this fic Michael and Lucifer were close before their Father gave Michael the job of banishing Lucifer. But once the deed is done Lucifer is suffering alone in Hell and Michael is left looking for answers in Heaven. This is all I have written/plan to write on it unless I get really inspired some time.





	Banished

**Happy Easter, here's a fic that portrays Lucifer sympathetically! Because that's what this holiday is about right? Jk, hope you enjoy my angsty take on the fall...  And just fyi Hell in this fic is pretty much the cage in Supernatural, but I'm calling it Hell because I mean that's where Lucifer is supposed to be.**

 

            His white wing feathers shone faintly, in a light that came from everywhere and nowhere: heaven’s steady glow reflecting onto him. He looked up at Michael, his brother, whose similar, soft wings swelled gently with the heaving of his muscular chest.

            Michael was crying, tears trickling slowly, majestically from his blue eyes, running down a face so beautiful that mortals cried out in pain to see it. But the tears did not distract him from the blood splattered across Michael’s torso. His blood.

            “Brother, please…”

            Even as he spoke he knew that Michael would not listen to him. Michael’s sword was red but it was not enough. Not yet.

            He stumbled away from Michael, ignoring the searing pain, the ribbons the sword had sliced in his chest, his arms, his thighs. But his brother followed.

            He fell. And though heaven’s floor was gentle, it became hard as he landed, almost hard enough to make a muffled thump. He lay where he had fallen until Michael came to stand over him, pulled him roughly to his feet and grabbed his wings.

            “No!” He thrashed with the frantic desperation of any threatened, winged creature. Wings were freedom. Wings were life.

            But Michael was the eldest, the most powerful. Soon he had the wings pinned beneath one bulging arm. He took the sword and began to hack at the feathers, sending them spiraling down, a false snowfall, laced with blood.

            Methodically he stripped his brother’s wings until only raw bone and muscle remained. The pain was excruciating, a sizzling, bloody heat upon his back. Tears formed in the corner of his eyes as he weakly twitched and writhed, making Michael’s fingers slip in his blood. Nausea came and he gagged and retched but there was nothing to come up. No food was in heaven but the Word of the Father.

            Michael held him up when he would have fallen helplessly to his knees. Michael’s blood-stained hands gripped him beneath his arms. Michael’s tears fell on his back, leaving clean skin amidst the gore. For a moment Michael paused. He thought maybe it was over now. He’d heard that the feathers could grow back, though he’d never seen it happen. They didn’t grow back white though. They’d be speckled with darkness. No longer pure.

            But the pause was only a pause. Michael raised his arm again. And then he sliced. An even swoop of his sword cracking through one featherless wing, blood and marrow spraying across the clean floor of heaven.

            His brother screamed and heaven shuddered with the insurmountable pain of one of its own. Lightning flashed below it. And when he finished screaming he whispered, “Please, let me go. Let me go. It’s done. I have been punished. I will… I will learn to love them. I swear it. I take back what I said. Just... Just let me go.”

            But Michael shook his head, his face twisted in sadness. His brother didn’t even have time to flinch before the sword swung again and he was screaming a second time, a sound even more raw than the last, so that fire, curtains of flame, flashed against the sky.

            His brother sagged in his arms and Michael held him up as his eyes rolled back in his head. But there was no escape from the pain, no unconsciousness for their higher form. His eyes rolled forward again, having never found the darkness where pain could not follow, a place that only mortals reached.

            All the strength had drained from his body. His beautiful wings lay shattered around him, blood and gore and feather and bone, squishing and crunching beneath his feet. He looked down at it and a single sob escaped. A sound purer than the screams, which frightened even Michael. Heaven’s light flared brighter at its echo in the air.

            But then his brother’s eyes hardened. The blue leeched out of them and a dark, dark red took its place, the same shade as the blood which clung to Michael’s skin, almost black.

            Michael looked down at his brother, weak and irreparably wounded in his arms, and he shivered, equal amounts of pity and hatred flashing through him at the sight of the unholy creature he had just helped to create.

            He forced himself to level his gaze with his brother’s and his brother knew what he was going to do and for a moment the blue in his eyes flooded back as terror and despair and, most painfully, love, shone through. But it was too late.

            “In the name of God our Father, I cast you from Heaven, and bind you to eternal imprisonment…” Michael hesitated for just a moment and hope flashed in his poor brother’s eyes. He wanted so badly to let him go that it ached. But his Father’s Word echoed in his ears and he could not refrain. “In Hell.”

            Suddenly flames burst out around his brother’s feet and Michael let go of him in surprise as they wound up his brother’s legs. His skin burned and blistered and the air filled with the stench of roasting flesh. His brother thrashed in the fire, screams flowing hoarsely from his throat, so weak that nothing happened when they echoed in the air.

            Pity flooded Michael’s heart and he extended his hand to calm the flames, but found that though he struggled he could not reach his brother. Horrified, he cried out “Lucifer!”

            The flames climbed over his brother’s head and slid down his throat and his nose and his ears and with a blinding flash the fire, the shattered wings, and his brother vanished. And he stared at the tiny flutter of ash, the only thing left behind.

 

            One moment he knelt in flames at his brother’s feet, the next they had consumed both him and the clouds below him and he was falling and falling and falling.

            It was night on this side of the Earth and in darkness he fell, spinning, seeing stars and then the dull gray curve of horizon, flashing by, making direction meaningless. Blood dripped from his body and then fell with him and against him, spattering his skin in warmth. The stumps where his wings had once been pumped and heaved, trying to stop the fall. He tried to hold them still, knew it was useless, but the instinct was too strong. They thrashed and made the blood fall even more thickly about him.

            The flames were no longer burning him, having had enough of scarring his flesh, and instead plunged around and beside him, cold to the touch. They shielded him as he plummeted through the atmosphere, burning so brightly he had to shut his eyes.

             His chest suddenly spasmed and he found himself out of air. For a moment he thought he would suffocate, his eyes bulging out, his face turning blue in an ugly expression of death never meant for angelic faces.

            Then his abdomen twitched and he was breathing, really breathing, for the first time. In heaven the air found its way into lungs unprompted. Breathing was unnecessary and no angels bothered with it; they’d never had the habit.

            Here it was _very_ necessary. The air tasted liked smoke, poisoned by the men who were really the cause of his fall. The cause of his first taste of unholy air, which slithered so reluctantly into one’s lungs and pricked holes in them. Oxidization. Unheard of in heaven, a slow killer on Earth.

            He finally found a way to balance himself, pointed headfirst toward the Earth. Forests and mountains and rivers and oceans soared up toward him, painted gray and black in moonlight, things he’d only seen in cloud spheres at the watch towers before. Things strewn unevenly across an uneven sphere of a planet. An imperfect world, unable to match heaven’s balanced cloud form.

            He could see some beauty in it though. A wildness in the places untouched by man which had its own sort of beauty, one that heaven did not have. Free, unorganized beauty.

            Soon he would hit the Earth. Would the landing kill him? Michael had told him once of his journeys there. But he’d had wings. He’d flown down, gently touching the desert sand, wielding his sword which caused men to fall down before him in terror. Lucifer was the one falling now. He had no wings. He had no sword. He was so weak that a mortal could finish him off if it wanted to, with one good blow to his head or heart.

            The flames shifted and began to block his sight of the Earth. Too bad. He’d have liked to at least see the place where he’d die before he died there. The fire writhed up around him like a glowing cocoon. He wondered if any men were watching this fall. If they stared at the unearthly fire and prayed to his Father or spat on the ground and cursed.

            The air grew thicker and thicker as he descended. Breathing here was more like drinking than breathing, he speculated. How did men stand it?

            Soon he would be dead. He was not sorry for what he’d said, about man. He hated them. Hideous creatures. Unworthy of his Father’s love. Angels were to serve them? To protect them? _They,_ the angels, were his Father’s true children, not these mudlings. Yet the Father doted upon them. Chose to bless them and their free will instead of his angels’ perfect obedience.

            Lucifer knew that other angels thought as he did. But in this moment he fell alone. He alone was chosen to be thrown out of heaven, to die here. To have Michael’s sword thrash his body until he no longer resembled an angel at all.

            He touched his cheek. The first cut had fallen there. It had burned with something so close to bliss, the fire that wreathed Michael’s blade, that he’d stopped fighting for a moment and reached up to touch it. He’d felt his blood wet his fingers. And he knew that he was marred forever.

            Even if Michael’s sword had gone no further the others would have seen that mark and known that he was punished, fallen from favor. He’d have lost rank. Why had he asked for Michael’s mercy up there? Michael was not the one to worry about. It would have been the other angels who tore him to pieces, constantly reminded him of his need for repentance, his folly. His folly which was not a folly. The humans were flawed, graceless, dirty, greedy, angry, hate-filled… How could the Father chose their broken love over his angels’ perfect response?

            He didn’t know. But he could feel the pit of hatred hard and black in his heart. He would die a bloody, mortal death, if he could die at all. He didn’t know. Heaven was where angels lived, and, a section of it at least, where men came when they died. Where would he go when he died? What was that word that Michael used, that unfamiliar term for where he was going?

            He closed his eyes as the darkness behind the fire quickly grew close and solid. He felt the too-thick air slide past him, felt the blood still trickling down his back, flecking his shoulders. He reached out with his arms and plunged into the hard dirty ground of the Earth.

            He did not land heavily, snapping his neck, his spine, upon the ground the way he thought he would. He sank instead, a slower fall, his arms soon immersed in the dirt. He tried to pull them out, twisted his head back toward the sky, away from the nasty enclosing ground. Air! He needed air! But he couldn’t get free.

            The flames pulled him forward, down. The top of his head sank into the damp earth and soon his nose and mouth joined it. He couldn’t breathe, but a tendril of flame forced itself inside his mouth and then into his lungs where somehow its burning satisfied his need for air.

            His feet were above ground, still cold and twitching in the air. But then they too entered the dirt where he could see nothing, feel only moisture and the pressing weight of the earth, though it didn’t seem to really touch him. He was going through it, not tunneling, for his raw wing stumps never touched earth. He would have felt it if they had.

            Down he went, first through a layer wriggling with insects and worms that buzzed through his head unaware of him at all, making him twitch and gag. Then through thick stone, for a very long time, ancient stone pitted with water and oil and gases and the remains of his Father’s first experiments. And then it began to get warm. He began to sweat and was horrified. Angels couldn’t sweat, could they? And yet he felt it beading on his skin. Was he an angel anymore? Had the removal of his wings changed him? Or was this normal for an angel out of heaven?

            Then it got hot. And hotter. And hotter. Until he was sweating everywhere and his limbs tingled and pressure built inside his skull. He was passing through rivers of melted stone and metal. His wing stumps ached and were itchy and the heat made him want to scream and thrash, but the flames held him still, kept pulling him into the heat.

            Finally his arms pierced the curtain of the magma and entered into air again. But it wasn’t cool Earthly air. And it wasn’t cool heavenly air. It was hot, thick, humid air somewhere deep below the surface where man lived. His forehead poked through and then finally his chin and the flame leapt out of his lungs and mouth and disappeared. He was left gasping in air that nearly dripped moisture, and tasted like sulfur and iron on his tongue. The flames dragged the rest of him out of the magma and dumped him unceremoniously on what felt like stone, blistering hot stone, hot enough to burn a mortal, but only enough to make an angel uncomfortable.

            He couldn’t see. All was utter darkness. A darkness that came from nowhere and everywhere. The opposite of heaven.

            He breathed in and out and listened. But it was silent. There was no sound other than his breathing, and no feeling of movement. What was this place? He reached out around him but his hands found only air and the smooth rock beneath him.

            He tried to stand but he was so tired, had lost so much blood, that his knees gave out and he fell heavily to the ground. It was harder than even heaven’s last embrace when he’d fallen, before the flames consumed him. He felt the rock peel skin from his knees when they hit it and from his palms as they kept his face from smashing into it.

            He panted into the silence and lay there, barely holding his chest up on shaky arms. Finally he couldn’t hold himself up at all. He lowered himself onto his stomach. He had never lain down before. Angels couldn’t sleep and didn’t need to rest in heaven. The Word of the Father fed them constantly.

            Now he lay on the ground like a worm. Like the snake, whom he greatly respected for helping him cause the fall of man from Eden. It had taken so little convincing, once he gave it a bit of his grace, a bit of intelligence. Adam and Eve, so foolish. Their story was close to that of his own fall. Except no one had tempted him. He had chosen to fall. Wasn’t that what his Father liked about man, their choices? Why didn’t his Father listen to him, accept his choice not to love the mudlings?

            He lay there, listening to his breath. He closed his eyes because opening them was the same as having them closed, the darkness was so complete. He tried to find what the Dream Angels once described to him, the place where mortals went while their bodies remained still and resting, a place that freed the consciousness from the body. But he could not. Angels don’t sleep. Not even angels cast from heaven in a wreath of holy fire.

            He felt the smooth stone pressing into his chest, felt bruises forming on his knees, felt the scars forming on his limbs where Michael’s sword had sliced him shallowly, felt the wounds scab over on his wing stumps, and around them where Michael’s sword had pierced his back. All of his wounds itched unbearably. But he knew that scratching would only reopen them, so he stayed still. And waited. Waited for something to happen. For his Father to Speak to him. To explain what this place was, why he was here, why he hadn’t died.

            But the darkness never shifted.

            His mouth grew dry and his tongue grew heavy and thick. He was thirsty… was that the word? He’d never felt it before.

            His stomach ached, seemed to shrink in on itself. It gurgled and rumbled and sent up flares of pain. He was hungry… was that the word? He’d never felt it before.

            There was no Word of the Father here. But how could there not be? He’d felt it even on Earth as he’d fallen, that sustaining shimmer. Faint as it was in the mortal realm, it had still been there. Here he felt nothing. Only alone. Very alone.

            There was nowhere the Word of the Father could not reach. It permeated the entire universe. He knew that. But he also knew that it was not here. There had to be a reason for that.

            “Father?” The ink-stained air did not respond.

            “Father?” His voice sounded very small in the darkness, and afraid. He suddenly realized that he _was_ afraid. He had never been alone before. The darkness felt vast. It could go on forever, for all he knew. Father could make places like that. And something about this hot darkness, this solemn weighted emptiness, discouraged shouting, tightened his vocal chords.

            “Father?” He whispered. He decided to speak as though Father could hear him, even though He didn’t seem to be listening. He could hear everything. So He had to hear Lucifer now, right? “Did you send me here to starve?”

            Asking that made him angry. He fed the anger, because it wasn’t fear or loneliness. It was as hot as this vast darkness and made him feel less helpless, more alive. “You spared my life in the fall only to take it here in this emptiness? Why Father?”

            There was no response. He could sense no change in the darkness. But his limbs felt heavier, weaker. His arms were going numb, so he rolled onto his side. He rolled a little too far and one of his wing stumps hit the rock. Pain flashed through his back and emerged out his mouth in a sharp cry. It echoed in the hollow halls of darkness.

            He could feel blood dripping down his back again and it made him thirstier, sent what little saliva he had oozing into his mouth. He knew the blood was pooling on the rock beneath him, he could feel it, growing sticky under his hips. He was so thirsty.

            No. Angels drank nothing but the Word of the Father.

            But there was none here. No sustenance. And he was so thirsty…

            Slowly he lifted himself up. He turned to the place where his hip had pressed into the rock and felt the ground until he found the spot where his blood had pooled. He lowered himself to his knees and then onto his stomach, resting on his elbows.

            He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t drink his own blood. It was disgusting. It was stupid.

            He was thirsty.

            He stuck out his tongue. He shivered. He pressed it to the rock and coated it in his wet, sticky blood, thicker than water, grimy with the dust of the rock. He pulled it into his mouth and swallowed, a swallow so dry it hurt. His mouth filled with the salty tang of his own blood. The first thing he’d ever tasted, warm and sour. He stuck his tongue out again.

            Soon the pool was gone. He was scarcely refreshed, but his thirst had subsided for the moment. He wondered if drinking his own blood offended Father. But how could he have done anything else? He felt so weak here, where breathing was like drinking, where he could not see even with his great angelic eyes, where he had no wings to lift him from this hole. The fear was back. Fear that he would die here and no one at all would hear his cries. Fear that he would never feel open air again. Fear that he would never see one of his brothers again. Fear that he would never hear from his Father again.

            He still loved his Father. He knew his Father was righteous and fair and that He loved more thoroughly than he could ever comprehend. He just couldn’t agree with his Father about man. Was that worthy of this banishment? He didn’t think so. Maybe he had deserved to be punished, yes. He should have held his tongue. Not criticized the ideas of the one who had created him. But banished from heaven? Cut off from the Word of the Father?

            A tear formed in the corner of his eye. That was new. He hadn’t known angels could cry.

            But when had he or his brothers ever had anything to mourn? They were secure in the Father’s love, content in their constant praising of their creator, and full of the knowledge that their Father would take care of them. He had been that way too before man had ruined him.

            However, here… here he was not safe or content or even healthy. He was lonely and exhausted and hungry, not just physically but spiritually. He needed the Word and there was none.

            The tear left his eye and rolled down his face. He caught it on the tip of his tongue. He was surprised at how similar it tasted to his blood. Salty. But cleaner, with no metallic tang.

            He ached, somewhere beside or perhaps even inside his heart. “Michael! Raphael! Gabriel! … Anyone? Can you hear me?”

            He listened to his words echo back and forth in the vastness until they came back to him only as a faint and garbled moan. So this was what banishment.

 

            Michael wiped his sword and looked at the blade. It sparkled, silver as bright as the surface of the moon, with only a hint of the fire glittering inside, fire that burst forth with his wrath, scorching before slicing into his foes.

            There was no trace of the blood it had tasted. Most recently the blood of his brother. He had never thought his sword would touch the flesh of his brothers or sisters. He never wanted it to. But now it had. It had gleamed dark with the blood of an angel and the fire in it had sparked all the higher for it. It had enjoyed bathing in that blood that sang with power. It wanted more.

            He shoved the sword into its golden sheath and relaxed fingers that had twisted themselves into fists. Swords encouraged blood lust. Father had said that. There had been no sword before man came to Earth, no need for one.

            But something had changed in Father when man Fell. He created other beings, dark beings, that cast shadows on the sub-consciousness of men. Things that made the brotherhood of Cain and Abel spiral into bloodshed. Michael did not know why. He did not question his Father.

            But after man Fell Father had come to him and drawn from the floor of heaven this sword. A sword that had become almost a part of Michael, responded with fire to his touch, gleamed and dulled with his emotions. A sword which recently was not responding to him the way it always had. Since when did the sword call for blood, instead of Michael? Something was wrong.

            As that thought ended his head jerked downward and his eyes fell to the floor of heaven. Because he could hear his name. For a moment it hung in the air, a shadow of a whisper that had once been a scream.

            He always knew when someone said his name and whether it was used in a blessing or a curse. This was neither. Someone was calling out to him. But how could it be so faint? From heaven he could hear a butterfly’s feet touch a flower petal in the remotest corner of the earth. Nothing could muffle sounds from below and keep them from heaven’s ears.

            Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps someone on Earth had called, “Micah!” And his angel ears had mistaken it for his name. But his heart was constricted in his chest.

            He adjusted his wings for no good reason, feeling the feathers flutter lightly in the constant soothing breeze of heaven’s air. Flutter the way that Lucifer’s had until Michael’s sword bit into his wings.

            No! He wouldn’t think of Lucifer. Lucifer was banished. Beyond angelic help. Beyond anyone’s help but the Father’s and the Father would deal with him as he dealt with everything: with justice and mercy. Perhaps Lucifer would be back within a few moons, healed by the Father who could heal any wound, repentant and humbled.

            But Michael could not find even in his most colorful imagination an image of Lucifer repentant and humbled. Always Lucifer had the loudest voice, the swiftest wings, the firmest grip. He shone with passion and lived up to his name, morning star. Father had not created Lucifer’s fires just to quench them. Michael couldn’t believe that. Father had a plan. And Michael could not abandon heaven to chase the echo of a cry that may or may not have once been his name. He fingered the hilt of his sword and went to the nearest watch tower. Just in case.

 

            He didn’t know how long he lay there. There was nothing to mark minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. He had never been out of heaven before; he had no idea how long it would take his wounds to heal under its conditions. He only knew that they were healing, despite his lack of nourishment.

            There was no more blood to drink once the cuts scabbed over and began to form scars. He grew thirsty again, but there was nothing he could do, except curse the moist air for taunting him and refusing to condense into a dew that he could drink. The hunger had not left his side since his arrival. He tried calling out to his Father again and again, but his tongue grew swollen and thick and the only sounds he could make were whimpers and strangled groans. His throat was too dry. He gave up making sounds altogether.

            He was too tired to move most of the time, but in brief moments where his anger roused him to action he would crawl along the stone, always in the same direction, always with a vague fear that he would run head first into something hard and unyielding, allowing more of his precious blood would flow away.

            The floor was always the same, smooth and hot, and he sweated continuously until he grew too dehydrated to do so. Then it felt like his skin was stretched too tight and no part of him stayed cooler than any other part. The floor did not have a slant. Wherever he was it was always silent.

            Soon he was too exhausted to move at all, not even in short bursts of crawling. He had to lie on his stomach because of the wounds on his back so he always felt out of breath, the stone pressing up on him, his teeth clamped shut because his chin rested on the ground. He wished to escape, to lose consciousness like a mortal, or even to die and discover what happened to an angel’s soul when it left its heavenly body. But he did not die. Something kept him alive, hanging on the verge of death, unable to move, unable to get nourishment, unable to see, unable to hear. Perhaps he had only imagined his fall and Father had simply locked him inside his own mind, crippling him and leaving him there to suffer and repent.

            He thought about trying to bash his own head in on the rock. But self-harm was a serious sin, an insult to the Father. And the rock was too smooth. It would take too long to break through his skull without something sharp to speed the process. So he didn’t do it. He just lay on the rock like a corpse, his eyes open and unblinking, no longer moving. There was no reason to move them in the darkness.

            He listened to his breath whistle softly in and out of him, through his nose because mouth-breathing hurt now that he had no moisture left in him. He thought about man. He tried to find something to love in them: their forms similar to his, their creativity, their free will. But he could only find the flaws that separated his kind from theirs: their creativity in destruction, the free will they used to desecrate what was once holy.

            He could have laughed if he’d still been able to do so. He _wanted_ to be repentant, he wanted to rejoin his Father in obedience, but even now, when he had nothing to lose, he could not forgive men their faults. Instead he prayed to his Father, asking forgiveness for this fault of his, this inability to love humanity as his Father wanted him to do. He got no answer. He didn’t expect one anyway.

            He finally let the tension drain from his neck and shoulders. He relaxed fully onto the stone, his entire body limp, vulnerable. Vulnerable. That thought almost made him tense up again, but there was nothing in this darkness. Nothing but him. So he lay there and waited for the Father to reveal his plan.

 

            Michael peered into the cloud sphere and saw nothing. Nothing unusual at all. Animals, plants, the regular tides of the oceans, men crawling about, doing whatever they chose. The sky held only birds. The water, only sea creatures. The earth, only land dwellers. Lucifer was nowhere to be found.

            But he had certainly fallen somewhere. Because he was not in heaven. Michael had guessed as much when the flames took him, and yet he had travelled the whole of heaven, asking around, looking for him just in case. Nothing. How could Lucifer not be in heaven and not be on Earth? Where had he sent him when he’d said that word…? Strangely the word he had said would not come to him. He couldn’t remember it. He let it go for the moment, frustrated.

            Father had not populated any other parts of the universe. He had decided to wait and see how Earth turned out first. And even if He had changed His mind Michael would have been able to see the creation in progress, the changing heat signatures and atmospheric patterns on the newly living world. So where was Lucifer?

            Gabriel told him to stop thinking about it. “You’ll drive yourself mad and next you’ll be following in Lucifer’s footsteps. All is as it should be and that’s all we need to know. Perhaps you should speak to Father about your worrying.” Then Gabriel had fluttered away to join the harp-players in heaven’s central yard.

            Michael did not want to speak to Father about it. He should, he knew he should, but he didn’t know what to say. Father spoke in mysteries and riddles. He wouldn’t simply confide His plans to Michael. Even Archangels like himself were not capable of understanding Father’s plans. So talking would do no good. Where could he get answers?

            Metatron. Metatron had said he had not seen Lucifer, when Michael asked, but Michael had not asked if he knew what had happened to Lucifer. The scribe always spoke honestly, but you had to ask the right questions to get the right answers. He would seek Metatron’s counsel again, this time with the right questions.

 

            _Lucifer?_

            He thought he heard his name. But he couldn’t have. Here there was only silence, darkness, heat. His eyes were open but they saw what they always had since he’d arrived here: nothing. The voice hadn’t sounded familiar. Certainly it wasn’t Michael or Father and they were the only people who would even try to contact him after what had happened.  

            Maybe he was going insane. He’d heard of humans who heard voices, saw things that weren’t really there. Maybe there was a seed of madness in all his Father’s creations and these conditions, the dehydration, starvation, and injury, were prodding his seed to bloom.

            _Lucifer._

            Okay, that time it was pretty loud. Why would he hear a voice he didn’t recognize, if it was his own mind playing tricks? This was a woman speaking. Her voice was gentle but firm, smooth as that of any of his brethren. At least her voice gave him something to focus on beyond the endless emptiness of his existence.

            He would have responded to her but his throat was raw and his tongue filled his mouth. He was incapable of producing sound and attempts at doing so were excruciatingly painful.

            _I can fix that._

            Had she just responded to his thought? How was that possible? Who was this? He felt his mind coming alive in a way it had not done in a long time. Something squeezed his neck and then his mouth opened, gasping, and suddenly something cool and wet was flowing down his throat. He drank greedily, his eyes closed in ecstasy. Something guided the liquid—not a drop spilled on the rock, though he could barely move his lips. He felt his tongue settling back to a normal size, his vocal chords shaking free of their dust. The stream stopped before he tired of it, left him wanting more, but it had done its healing work.

            “How did you do that?”

            He’d almost forgotten the sound of his voice. Certainly he’d forgotten the way this place could make the smallest whisper boom with echoes.

            _Your Father sent me, Lucifer_.

            “Father?” Was He listening then? Did he accept Lucifer’s sorrow, despite his admission that he could not love humanity _? Father, please let me come home. I promise I will not disobey you, no matter what you ask of me_ , he prayed.

            _He knows your heart, Lucifer. He knows that though you would do whatever He commanded, your heart will not obey. You cannot love them Lucifer. And love is the only thing He wishes of you._

            He stared into the darkness. But then where did that leave him? His Father was the one who had made him! Could He not correct this perceived flaw in Lucifer’s heart? All he wanted was to go home, even if it meant bearing the scorn and derision of his brothers and sisters. Even if he was stripped of all his titles, made to wear a cloak of sackcloth, told to obey the orders of every other angel in heaven, he would endure that shame as punishment. If he could not love the humans, did that mean he could not return to heaven? The voice didn’t answer. He wasn’t sure if he should hope or despair.

            “If you are not here to return me to heaven, why are you here? To slay me?”

            _I am here to do your Father’s will. He has a plan for you, Lucifer._

            “He always has a plan. That is what he does, plans! Was this part of his plan then? To make me flawed and broken? To create the humans knowing that I would be unable to accept that he loved them more than—?”

            Suddenly his voice was gone, sealed off by his guest.

            _Do not blaspheme. It is not for you to question Him_.

            Then his throat opened once more. “It’s a little late for that. But I’ll ignore that issue if you tell me: is there a sentence, a judgment my Father has passed upon me?” Surely he had not heard the word ‘eternal’ when Michael cast him out. And anyway, Michael was not a jailer; he didn’t have the power to deliver a sentence on another angel. Only Father could punish justly.

            _Yes. You will have dominion over this plane which your Father has created, and you will never leave it. You will live without the Word of the Father, for in this plane he has removed every part of himself from his creation. You will never see another angel, nor touch your feet to the floor of heaven again. In separating yourself from one of your Father’s creations, you separate yourself from all, and even from God himself._

            The voice had no tone. It delivered his sentence calmly, as if it was not the end of his life, of any hope he had. It was over then. He would never reconcile with Michael, never return to the only place where the air was pure, where he never tired, where he could be happy. He had not moved since the voice had arrived; now he turned his head, searching the empty darkness. It had not changed, even with the voice’s arrival. “Where am I? What is this prison?”

            _This is Hell. The absence of all things holy._

            That was the word he had forgotten. But what was that bit about holiness? “But I—“

            _You have fallen, Lucifer. With your wings you lost your claim to that word, holy. Here._

            At the last word he felt something twist inside him and a groan escaped his lips. “What did you do to me?”

            _You rejected holiness. Now it also rejects you. Cry out to your Father. Try._

            “Why?”

            _You want to know what has happened. This will answer._

            “Fa—!” He could not finish the word. It felt as if something clawed at his throat, seared his lips. He tried again. “Father?” He choked the word out as if he were being strangled; every letter pained him. He couldn’t even look accusingly at the voice, because it seemed to exist only in sound waves, or else the darkness of Hell shielded it from his sight. He could not speak his Father’s name. Even thinking it made something pinch in his chest. But he hadn’t rejected heaven!

            The word heaven hurt him too. Did Michael? Yes, though that could have been his sorrow. This was not what he wanted, not a choice he had willingly made. He tried again to accept humanity into his heart, to repent as his… as He wanted. But he could not. And as his punishment grew so did his hatred, burning inside him.

            “What now?” The voice didn’t immediately respond. “You said my… He had a plan for me, what is it?”

            Suddenly he rose from the rock where he had been lying, but it was not of his own volition. He moved through the heat, the damp air shifting around him without providing any breeze. He hovered above the floor as if weightless; unafraid because he did not believe the voice was there to mete out physical punishment. Michael had already done that work.

            Hell was silent, but in front of him the air was growing lighter. It did not illuminate Hell’s landscape; instead the glowing was localized, as if the light was growing in front of him. It spread out from its central point until a figure like that of a man’s was displayed before him. He reached out toward it and its arm reached toward his, a mirror image. Their fingers touched, though he felt nothing.

            Then suddenly the light, which had been pure white, gained color. Skin tones flooded through the figure and its face shifted out of the blankness. Its eyes opened. He saw himself.

            He stared and it stared back. It hadn’t mattered, how he looked, alone in the darkness. But now he saw himself and was repulsed. His dark hair was still matted with a blackened crust of blood. His eyes were sunken into his skull and his irises were dark, blood red, no longer a clear bright blue. His cheekbones were hollow and the pale scar on his cheek gleamed at him. His collarbones jutted from his chest, and his ribs were easily visible. He was naked and every muscle on him clung to his frame, skeletal. Scars laced his flesh, on his chest, his arms, his thighs, where Michael’s sword had fallen. Not only this, but the places where the flames had scorched him the skin was still red and raw, not yet recovered. As he looked the figure began to turn. He didn’t want to see his back, but he couldn’t look away.

            It was worse than he had thought. The shrunken thinness of his frame made the nubs of his wings sharp and obvious; the hideousness of their now pointless existence made him feel numb. The scars of Michael’s punishing work ran in long slices across his shoulder blades. The nubs, all that remained of his beautiful wings, ended in lumps of scar tissue. Scabs still lingered in the center of some of the deepest scars. Caked blood was smeared across his back. Looking at himself, at the scarred, deformed mess of his body, made tears come to his eyes. He was hideous, and worse than that, pathetic.

            He flexed his wing nubs gingerly and they throbbed in pain in response. He watched them shift ever so slightly in the reflection, shaking with even that little bit of exertion. How could those muscles have ever carried him so swiftly and surely across heaven’s sky?

            _Even in exile you are still an angel._

            He almost thought he heard pity in its tone. He didn’t want pity. What good was an angel barred from heaven? He wanted to go home. Or failing that, to end his miserable existence. But he knew his Fa— wouldn’t let him go. The man had plans.

            As if on cue, he felt a sudden ache run down his spine. As he arched his back so did the glowing figure, the vertebrae visible beneath his skin. Then suddenly the scar tissue at the end of his wing nubs burst open. He screamed as he felt the skin explode and fall to the rock below. He opened his eyes and stared at the bloody holes. It looked as if the nubs were hollow. He whimpered as the blood oozed down his back.

            Then he felt something stir within them, as if someone had jabbed a finger in each of the wounds and began poking, swirling and prodding beneath his flesh. He watched, horrified, as something smooth and dark began pushing forth, out of his back. He screamed as it widened, ripped away more of his skin to reach the open air. Enormous folded flaps of skin emerged, dark and damp, like the caps of bloody mushrooms. With another thrust more folds came forth, blood gushing down his back, spattering to the floor, hot against his skin. Fixated, he watched them writhe, splitting the milky membrane that contained them, and shedding it. He felt the nubs connect, no longer nubs, as the newly attached limbs pumped and quivered, alive again.

            Freed of their encasing, the folds unfurled, and beat at Hell’s damp air. They were wings. But not the beautiful, feathery kind, the light and soft things that had carried him through heaven. No, these were thick and leathery, bound with skin, pulsing with veins, velvet on the outside, smooth as the rest of his flesh on the inside. Every bone in them was visible, the sharp and clacking framework, each end tipped with a fearsome claw. These were the wings of something born in darkness, made to pulse and skitter through the bowels of this Hell, to frighten and to awe.

            The wings, now ready and freed, hung partially opened and did not move. He twitched his wing muscles carefully and they responded as smoothly as his old wings had, rippling, billowing until they were completely open, full of air. He flexed and they pumped in response, pushing him backwards, away from the glowing figure. They weren’t holding him aloft, the voice was doing that, but he knew that they would work. He could fly. That thought filled him with joy, despite the lack of sky, despite the darkened nature of these new wings.

            The voice seemed to sense his emotions; it unceremoniously plunged him back to the floor. He had felt strong with new wings on his back and the fading of the ache around his severed nubs, but when the force the voice had used to lift him let go he fell to the ground, all his muscles trembling, his wings twitching. He tried to quiet his body, but it would not obey, too weak with the slow healing and now the new trauma of fresh muscles, new weight upon his back. He flopped on the ground like a fish as tremors wracked his body. He was barely able to hold even his facial muscles in place, his fingers and toes clenching and unclenching, his legs and arms thrashing.

            He tried to regain control but it felt as if jolts of electricity were shooting down his spine, each jolt sending out fresh spasms. He swallowed his pride, “Please, help me!”

            He realized that the glowing figure had faded and Hell was dark once more. The voice was very quiet when it responded. _I’m sorry, Lucifer, it is not His wish._

            He could feel the voice’s presence, a feeling which he only recognized now, fading away. “Please! Don’t leave me like this!”

            But he knew the voice was gone. His body continued to tremble and shake as if he were possessed. The skin over his scars stretched painfully and soon he felt the scabs splitting open, his blood leaking out of him once more. As he grew more and more exhausted the tremors grew weaker but he could no longer keep his head still; his neck began to jerk and contort with the rest of his limbs.

            Only his wings remained unaffected, the new muscles too weak to join in, a small blessing, as at least he did not have to worry about breaking them against the stone. The ache of his tired muscles spread throughout him and he wished, prayed, to fall unconscious, but he could not. All he could do was wait in the darkness, listening to the scrape and smack of his skin against the ground, knowing that these useless movements were sapping the last of his strength, turning his limbs into jelly, and knowing that there was nothing he could do.

 

            “Metatron?” Michael stared at the enormous trees. They were thicker than any of those that grew on Earth, as wide as houses and tall as towers. Winding around the trees, carved into their creamy bark, were stairs, and along every length of stairs, shelves bursting with books. Against the trees’ trunks leaned slabs of stone, which he knew would be carved with some of the earliest words. He didn’t know what kind of organizational system Metatron had. Few angels were devoted to the pursuit of knowledge; only scribes spent any real amount of time here, and only Metatron could claim to have handled every book and scroll in heaven.

            Perhaps different trees housed different subjects? Or maybe each type of tree? He saw now that their bark and leaves varied; perhaps each tree represented a different letter. He walked up to one, distracted for a moment, and reached out to touch a particularly delicate looking sheath of what appeared to be dried leaves.

            “Careful.” He turned and found Metatron standing behind him. “That was written by Adam himself, in the garden. A list of the names of every creature and thing that Adam saw. And a few lines of particularly bad poetry. It’s one of Father’s favorite works.”

            “This is quite the library.” He didn’t remember it being so large.

            “The humans have been busy. And when was the last time you came by? A few centuries ago, I believe?”

            He inclined his head. “It may have been that long, yes.”

            “I’ve spoken more with you in the past week than I have in the last few millennia put together. This thing with Lucifer is really bothering you, isn’t it?”

            Michael frowned. He’d forgotten how impudent Metatron could be. “As it should bother all of our brothers and sisters. One of our own has rejected our Father’s commandment.”

            “Can you really claim to be surprised? Lucifer has been testing the limits of His patience since he was born. Father’s just finally had enough.” Metatron smirked at him. “You’re only feeling guilty because you had to play the bad cop and take the razor to his wings.”

            Michael’s hand went to his sword. “You try my patience, scribe! He was my brother and I mourn his loss! Do not belittle his fall!”

            “Take it easy, Mike. Nobody’s mocking you.”

            He couldn’t tell if Metatron was lying or not, but he decided to move on to what he’d come for. “I only came to ask: do you know where Lucifer was sent when I banished him?”

            “You were there; don’t you remember where you sent him?” Metatron leaned against a tree and Michael fought the urge to draw his sword out of its sheath.

            “I can’t remember. Father has somehow blocked the word from my mind.”

            “Have you thought that maybe there’s a reason for that? Father generally has a plan in mind when he does something so drastic. I mean, it’s not for us lowly children to question Him.”

            That last comment almost smacked of blasphemy. Michael wondered what Metatron had been doing with his time in the library of Heaven. Perhaps researching the humans had corrupted him. Michael vowed to keep a closer eye on him. But he ignored the comment for now. “If what I’d done did not prick my conscience I would let it go. But Father gave us a sense of right and wrong and I know that something is not right. Please, answer me.”

            “Oh alright, but don’t go all goo-goo eyed on me.” Michael looked at him blankly. Metatron suddenly pumped his wings and soared to the treetops, leaving Michael to catch up. They glided leisurely through the neat rows and Michael realized the grove was even larger than he’d thought. At least one hundred trees resided there, maybe more, though not every tree was full of literature yet. Metatron stopped at one of the half-full trees, lightly perching on a step near the top.

            “Here we go. Father had me record a bit of Lucifer’s sinful speech, as well as his sentence.” He flipped through some pure white volumes, apparently tomes written in Heaven by the scribes themselves. Then he stopped. “Okay here’s the part where you banished him. ‘In the name of God our Father, I cast you from Heaven, and bind you to eternal imprisonment… in Hell.’ Can’t say our Father lacks a flare for the dramatic.”

            Michael was only confused. That word, Hell, made his temples throb, and even now his mind sought to forget the term. Hell. Hell. Hell. Had he heard it before? Never. So where was it? What was it? “Where is Hell, Metatron? What is it?”

            Metatron rolled his eyes. “Even if I had that information I wouldn’t give it to you Mike. Not that I don’t like you and all, but this is above your clearance. My advice is, let Lucifer get what’s coming to him. You may have been in charge of the banishment, but the choice to fall was all his.”

            Michael just looked at the scribe. “Thank you for your services.” He jumped off the stair and into flight, but still caught Metatron’s hushed mutter. “Or do whatever you want and get yourself in trouble too. See if I care. Idiot.”

 

          **And that's it. That's all I have written. Poor Lucifer... Anyway I hope you liked it, let me know what you thought in the comments!**


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